


Fool's Gold

by Frayach



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: Closeted Character, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Pining, Regret, Road Trips, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1251229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frayach/pseuds/Frayach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <img/></p>
<p>It’s the first Christmas after Ennis’s divorce, and he’s got an idea that this year things might be different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fool's Gold

**Author's Note:**

> I think that of all the stories I've ever written in all of my different fandoms, this is the best. Enjoy :)

Ennis Del Mar was still more than a little drunk when he found himself stuck behind an idling 18-wheeler in downtown Cheyenne. Outside, enormous flakes drifted down like wood ash during fire season. It wasn’t snowing quite as hard as it had been when he left Riverton, but that still didn’t mean he could see a damn thing. One of his wipers was bent thanks to that no-good jackass of a brother-in-law of his ( _ex_ -brother-in-law, he reminded himself), and instead of clearing off the windshield it left an icy smear, thick and gritty as coleslaw. He pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. Best stop and get a cup of coffee next chance he got. He reached over and rolled down the window.

“Goddamn it!” he yelled into the chug and stench. “You plannin’ on spending the goddamn night at this intersection?” He punched his horn for good measure, but all that came out was a sound not too unlike the bleat of a sick sheep. Piece a shit truck. He leaned out his window, squinting through the smeared glare of taillights. A single snow flake caught in his eyelashes. It took several tries to blink it away. At last he saw the driver’s arm waving him to pass on the left. He put the truck in gear and stepped on the gas, spraying slush behind his tires in long arcs. He’d been on the road nearly six hours already, and he hadn’t even made it as far as the Colorado state line.

Damn if Jack wouldn’t be surprised as shit to see him. Ennis reached for his hat where he’d set it on the seat beside him and snugged it back down to his to ears, tipping it up in the front so he could see the stretch of road before him. Downtown Cheyenne was shuttered up good and tight, his headlights skimming along the dark glass of empty store fronts. Even the pawn shops were closed. He fiddled with the radio dial, but all he could get was more Christmas music and one of those preachy channels that makes you want to stop at the nearest liquor store and buy yourself a fifth of Jesus Water.

Sure enough, Jack would be surprised to see him. Ennis could almost picture the look on his face. He’d pull into the curved driveway – he knew it was curved because one time he’d asked Jack to describe his house, the front lawn, the livingroom, the kitchen, the garage, even the damn bathroom. Everything but the bedroom. He’d rather not think about that one too closely. It was easier to imagine Jack sacked out on the couch, his long legs hanging over the armrest and his hat covering his face from the television glow. He’d pull into the curved driveway and stand there for a second, maybe even smoke a cigarette to steady his nerves. It would be cold in Texas, but not as cold as fucking Wyoming. And maybe there’d be stars when he looked up, thousands of them as thick as that white stuff in the snow globe Jenny had given him the week before. _Merry Christmas, Daddy_ , she’d said and kissed his cheek. _I asked Santa to bring you home_. He’d set it on the windowsill over the sink and went to the fridge to get his girls some milk to go with the Nilla Wafers he’d got them, opening the carton first to give it a good sniff. Not bad yet, he’d thought. _You gotta turn it upside down to make it snow, Daddy_ , Jenny said, stern as a little teacher, her skinny arms crossed on her chest and her legs swinging in the cheap dinette chair.

_You gotta turn it upside down to make it_ . . . .

Ennis rolled down his window again and let the cold air slap his face as the downtown gave way to low-slung warehouses and chain-linked fencing. He passed one last A &P with its red and blue lights and signs advertising pre-stuffed turkeys where the trucks parked fender to bumper in the lot were the only signs of life. Teenagers in nothing but their shirt-sleeves sat on tailgates, the tips of their cigarettes glowing like December fireflies. Beyond that there were a few more warehouses and then nothing but the foothills, huddled against the sides of the road as though the asphalt were a kind of liquid fire they could warm their hands over.

_You gotta turn it upside down_.

Jack would be the one to see him out there. Ennis had no doubt about that. He’d get up from the couch and make his way to the kitchen, thinking he wanted another beer or something when really he was headed to the window looking out on the driveway. Simple as that. Jack just had this fuckin’ sixth-sense or something. He just seemed to know when Ennis was about without no warning or nothing. Like that time up in the Owl Creek when Ennis had hiked out after dark to get them a case of whiskey and came back along the eastern streambed instead of the trail following the creek straight up the gorge. The moon had been bright enough to light the dry tops of the rocks, and they’d looked to Ennis like women bending over their washing, or the ghosts of old prospectors, hunched over their pans. He walked slow and steady - so steady that the bottles scarcely bumped one another in their box - his every sense awake to the point of discomfort.

_About goddamn time_ , Jack had said when Ennis was within twenty yards of the ring of firelight around their camp. _I about thought you’d been eaten by bears or somethin’_. In the flickering light, Ennis could see the sheen of Jack’s dark hair, the pale line of his sheepskin collar, the gleam of a rifle barrel propped against the log beside him. Not once did he turn his head until Ennis set the case down with a clang. Ennis pulled off his gloves and warmed his hands over the fire for a moment.

_Howdya hear me?_ He asked, reaching for the joint glowing between Jack’s fingers. _I thought I was being pretty damn quiet_.

Jack snorted. _That’s what you thought, is it?_ He accepted the joint back from Ennis and took a long draw. Ennis settled down beside him and tilted his head back to a sky so bright with stars it was like looking at a new snow through squint-watered eyes. Jack quirked his mouth into a smile and let the smoke out all at once through his nose. _You can’t sneak up on me, Del Mar_. He stubbed the joint with a flick of his fingers.

_Is that so?_ Ennis asked wedging his cold hands into his jacket pockets and hunching his shoulders around his ears. Jack looked at him the way he always did when he knew he’d gotten Ennis to see something his way - one eyebrow arching and that quirk of a smile broadening into a grin. Ennis felt the leap of quick fire in his groin, as though the ring of stones they’d built earlier that evening weren’t no kind of barrier at all.

_Yep. That’s so_ , said Jack.

 

Just north of Loveland, Ennis heard the engine’s dry chuckle. He shook his head and realized he’d been asleep as a translucent dream peeled back to reveal a snowless cloudless sky. He turned off the heat and turned on the radio, cranking the dial as far as it would go. In-between “White Christmas” and “Winter Wonderland,” a lady’s voice singsonged about buying shoes for the whole family at some place off Canyon Boulevard in Boulder. Canyon Boulevard. Ennis yawned wide enough to split his head like a watermelon. What would life look like from Canyon Boulevard? All he could picture was red clay buildings like the ones in Riverton, only taller. And on either side mountains rising high enough to throw a shade over the sidewalks so that it was always dusk, a 24-hour dusk. That sliver of time between finishing the day’s job and getting too drunk to remember how tired you are. Canyon Boulevard. Shit, it’d been a long time since he’d been farther away from anywhere he’d been.

Jack had been to Boulder. Drove through it most times to get to Riverton, though now and then he came up through Salt Lake if he had business at the company’s branch in Flagstaff. One time he’d picked up something for Ennis. _What’s this?_ Ennis had asked when Jack tossed what looked like a wad of Kleenex at him. He’d just settled back against the stump of an old lodge-pole pine, a pot of new potatoes between his knees and his knife, whetted and shining, like a piece of gunmetal sky touched by the sun’s sinking light.

_Nothing_. Jack squinted up at the dark outline of Carney Peak. Down the valley came the yipping of coyotes. _Noisy bastards_ , he said and kicked at one of the stones in their fire ring, nudging sparks free from the low-burning blaze. _Well, you gonna see what it is or what? I’m near starving and you haven’t even started peeling yet_.

Ennis looked down and unwrapped the bundle, turn by turn until he thought for sure it would open on nothing but air and Jack’s teasing voice, _fooled ya!_ But there at the end of all that unraveling was a knobbly rock, scaled and shimmering like a lizard, the color of a snowmelt puddle in a parking lot, water and gasoline circling each other like tree rings. He weighed it in his palm and his throat closed suddenly around a lump, hard and knobbly and mysterious as the thing he held in his hand.

_What the hell is it?_ He asked and then coughed, spitting into the fire.

_Whaddya mean, “what the hell is it?”_ Jack asked good-naturedly. _Whaddya think it is? Fool’s gold, of course_.

_I dunno what fool’s gold looks like_ , Ennis grumbled. _Never claimed I was no geologist_. He held the rock up to the firelight, examining it closely. Its cool glimmer felt warm in his hand, as though he’d picked up a piece of a star.

_Found it off the side a the road in the canyon lands just north a Boulder_ , Jack said glancing shyly at Ennis and looking away when he saw that Ennis was watching him. _Had to take a piss_ , he said with a shrug, blushing.

Ennis turned and set the rock on top of the stump he’d been leaning against. He rose to his feet and crossed the space of leaping shadow to where Jack stood. The yipping of the coyotes had faded as they made their way up to tree-line. The sun was gone. There was nothing but the two of them and the hard line of firelight and darkness. The Back Range had shrunk to the size of a single room. Ennis slipped his arms around Jack’s waist and pulled him back, tight against his chest, until the fire-hot wool of Jack’s collar and the fire-hot scent of Jack’s skin was all that Ennis could smell. As though he’d been waiting for just this moment all evening, Jack relaxed into his embrace with a murmured sigh, reminding Ennis fleetingly of the sound his daughters used to make when he came in after a night of drinking and kissed their sleep-flushed cheeks.

_I thought a you_ , Jack said, and Ennis didn’t think about what that might mean - whether it meant _I-was-on-my-way-to-see-you-so-you-was-on-my-mind_ or what. He wasn’t thinking about anything at the time, because Jack’s voice sounded like it had that summer so long ago. Cocky and shy, all at the same time. Later, Ennis came to wonder whether it had been the name – Fool’s Gold – that had put Jack in mind of him, like some kind of promise made and then broken. But that was later. That moment he thought of nothing else than the way Jack felt in his arms and the way it seemed as though he might’ve swallowed a live ember for all the burning in his guts.

_I_. . . . he nuzzled the word in Jack’s dark curls. . . . _I_. . . But the thought ended in a kiss as his mouth found the galloping pulse beneath Jack’s ear. And whatever he might have said was lost in the sudden hot stab of want that followed from the taste of Jack’s skin and the way Jack pushed back against his thighs and groin.

_Forget the fucking potatoes_ , Jack growled as Ennis tugged up his shirt and slid his hand into the waistband of Jack’s jeans stopping just where warm skin met coarse hair. He felt the muscles tighten in Jack’s stomach, and when Jack’s head fell back on his shoulder, Ennis wrapped his fingers around his twitching cock. The fire snapped, throwing sparks into the air. Jack shuddered in his arms, but from desire or chill Ennis couldn’t tell. The wind had come up since night fell, and the stars were hard and bright. There’d be frost again when they woke, and everything would be gray until the sun rose from behind the sheltering peaks and touched the world with a cold and smoking fire. _Like wet towels was burnin’_ , Jack said once, his tin cup balanced on his knee as he watched the frost turn to steam.

_Com're_ , Ennis said, pulling his hand out of Jack’s jeans and stripping off his jacket, his head spinning less from the whiskey they'd been drinking than the knowledge that within minutes he’d be riding Jack harder than a high roller at the regionals. He threw his jacket on the ground for Jack to kneel on, his hands working furiously at his belt buckle, the buttons of his jeans, but when he caught sight of Jack’s eyes, he stopped, frozen. Dark and wide, like the lake they’d come on just above timberline, sudden and unexpected and shimmering like a highway in the Utah sage hills. Without undoing more than a couple buttons, Jack pulled his shirt over his head in one quick movement, his eyes finding Ennis’s again, solemn and still, the firelight licking at his bare skin. Ennis’s mouth went dry. Just like that. Like a river swallowed up by the desert. And still Jack watched him, on his knees, gazing up, and Ennis had the most crazy of thoughts. Who was this man with the lost-little-boy eyes and how had he come to be kneeling, half naked and goose-pimpled with cold, on Ennis’s denim jacket? Waiting for him? Waiting. Waiting for Ennis to make love to him.

_God, Jack_ , Ennis whispered, his voice rough and hoarse. _Goddamn it_.

Jack reached up and took his hand, pulling Ennis down beside him. _I know_ , he said and found Ennis’s mouth with his, stealing Ennis’s breath with a hunger that Ennis could almost believe was greater than his own. _I know_.

 

The truck broke down before he even reached the outskirts of Denver. He’d been ignoring the noise in the engine, turning up the radio louder and louder, but when smoke started pouring from under the hood, he finally pulled over on the side of the road. There was the spray of gravel, the screeching of tires and then sudden silence, the engine ticking like a manic clock, and the smell of burning oil and hot metal filling the cab. Both hands still on the wheel, Ennis simply sat and watched as the smoke blew sideways in the wind like someone blowing steam off a cup of coffee.

_You gotta turn it upside down_ . . .

Jenny and Alma Junior would be waiting for him, but he wouldn’t come. He could see their pale faces in the window, looking out through the new plaid curtains Alma had put up after he left. Behind them the lights on the tree flashed on and off, on and off.

“Fuck,” he said, but without conviction. Just “fuck.”

Before too long a trucker stopped and gave him a ride to the next exit, a plastic Christmas tree swinging from the rearview mirror and a package of Slim Jims sticking out of the ash tray, reminding Ennis that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast that morning and then only a cup of coffee and a couple a powdered donuts. But when he pulled out his wallet at the Qwik n’ Go, there was only a twenty and three ones staring back at him. Not enough to eat and get a place to sleep. Fortunately for him though, the guy at the front desk of the Best Western was in a Christmas frame of mind and had a couple of pieces of Kentucky Fried chicken he didn’t mean to eat. He offered them to Ennis and watched half-bored and half-amused as Ennis gnawed them to the bone and wiped his greasy hands on his jeans.

“You got no place better to be on Christmas eve than this rat-ass place?” he asked and because he’d just given Ennis half of his dinner, Ennis decided not to rip him a new one.

“Looks like it,” he said. “Gotta room?”

“You can have the whole fucking place if you want it,” the guy said. “You’re the only one here. 'Sides me, of course, but I ain’t gonna be here more than a couple more hours.”

“Good for you,” Ennis said, but without rancor. He was suddenly tired. Bone fucking tired. “How much?”

“Twenty,” the guy said, and Ennis slid the bill across the scuffed Formica counter.

 

The room was shabby but clean. Ennis stripped off his shirt and stood before the mirror in the bathroom. The yellowy light gave his skin a sallow look, and there were dark rings beneath his eyes. No doubt about it, he looked like shit. Better that his girls not see their Daddy like this, he thought, even though he didn’t really believe it. He undid his buckle and pushed his jeans down, kicking them into the corner next to the toilet, and stepped into the steaming shower, closing his eyes as the water flowed down his back, over his face. A bit of soap lather and the memory, bright and clear as an October morning, of Jack, shirtless, on his hands and knees and Ennis humping him hard, through their jeans, the almost-this-closeness of it holding back the orgasm until his cock felt like it would burst. Ennis braced a hand against the side of the shower as he came, milking his memory to the last shuddering drop, his breath coming in short hard pants, but then quieting until he could straighten again. He emptied the tiny bottle of shampoo into his hand and scrubbed at his scalp until it burned, his mind, at last, empty and blank as the prairie sky. Scoured, swept clean by the wind. 

 

“Who’s this?”

Ennis could feel his heart thudding in his throat, but he didn’t swallow, didn’t make a noise. On the other end of the scratchy line, he heard Jack sigh.

“Ennis, is that you? It’s fucking three o’clock in the morning.”

As always, Ennis said nothing, though in his head he told Jack about how he’d woken that morning, the sun seeping in through the faded curtain, with a sense that things could be different somehow and all he had to do was get in his truck and start driving south. That simple. That fucking simple.

“Listen, friend, one a these days you’re gonna get Lureen on the other end a this line and scare the piss outta her. Think you’re some pervert or somethin’.” Jack laughed and somewhere in Colorado - a few hundred miles closer to Jack than he’d been in months - Ennis smiled.

_I was on my way to see you, Jack_ , he said, but only in his head. _Was gonna see you, see your kid. See Lureen even. See that shit-ass office you’re always complainin’ about. The bar you go drinkin’ at. That filly you bought for too goddamn much money_. . . .

“Hey, Merry fucking Christmas,” Jack said and cleared his throat. “Give the girls a hug from me. From their Uncle fucking Jack.” He laughed sadly.

Ennis closed his eyes, which were suddenly burning. Had he gotten shampoo in them? It was time to hang up or he’d not have any money left to buy a cup of coffee in the morning.

“Bye, Del Mar,” Jack said as though he had sensed Ennis’s thought through miles and miles of wire stretching across miles and miles of red dirt. “See ya in the spring,” and then, mercifully, there came a click and the humming silence of a dead line. Slowly, wearily, Ennis set the receiver down in its cradle.

 

_You gotta turn it upside down_. . . .

In the end, he had to pawn his wedding ring to get the truck fixed. Been carrying it around in his pocket since the divorce for just such a need, though when he’d left the house on Christmas eve it was with the hope of buying Jack’s kid a present, some kind of model tractor or something. Maybe even a B-B gun if Jack hadn’t already got him one. And a case of whiskey, too, for him and Jack, that is if there was still enough left over. The ring was cheap as shit, really. Been all he could afford with the money left over from Brokeback after he’d paid off the bank and the feedstore and everybody else he’d been owing money to. Barely got him a tank of gas, which, in turn, barely got him back to Riverton.

When he pulled up to the little run-down ranch he was renting, the weather was just starting to change again. The gray sky hunkering down over the prairie and a few flakes in the wind, small and stinging, as Ennis stood squinting at the horizon. The flutter of something bright caught the corner of his eye, and he turned toward the slow-collapsing porch. A piece of green construction paper was stuck between the warped old frame and the screen door. Ennis walked toward it slowly, already dreading the tender sadness he knew he’d feel in his chest when he pulled it out and saw it was a card made by one of his girls.

_Ho Ho Ho!_ was written across the top in wobbly magic marker. And inside was an _I ♥Daddy_. A cotton-ball snowman and a candy cane, like the kind the check cashing place hands out at Christmas, were glued to the back. _Love Alma and Jenny_.

Behind him, the wind whistled through the clothes lines and rattled the tin sheeting on the shed. Ennis tucked the card into his jacket pocket, but paused before turning the key in the lock. The thought of the little kitchen with its dirty linoleum floor and god-knows how many days worth of dishes piled up in the sink, the living room with its busted sofa and T.V. you had to slap hard to get a picture. The thought of the constant drip drip drip of the bathroom sink and the wind screaming through every crack and seam made him feel sick, almost like he’d eaten something bad. The bar, at least, would have people around and music playing, even if most of it was shit. Ennis turned and went back to his truck. By the time he’d return that night, he’d be too drunk to notice anything but his bed. Fuck it. He already had an unpaid tab at The Eagle. Wouldn't make that much difference if he added another ten to it. And besides, this Christmas was fucked all to hell anyway. Too late to change that now. Ennis climbed into his truck and jumped the clutch, spinning dirt up behind him and peeling out into the empty road which was already swirling white with snow.

Maybe next year things would be different. Maybe next year.


End file.
